Author: katenepveu

Posted on

Lackey, Mercedes: Storm Rising; Storm Breaking

I’d mentioned that the most recent books I’d read were subway books from the library; the first was Lost and Found. The other two were paperbacks, Mercedes Lackey’s Storm Rising and Storm Breaking. These are the final two books in a trilogy (the first is Storm Warning) set in her popular Valdemar universe. I’d read these before, which is why I took out them out even though the branch library didn’t have the first volume.

Lackey has approximately a gazillion books in this world, most of which are your basic misunderstood/abused teen goes through much nastiness, but wins through to a place in the community. (The Arrows trilogy were her first, and seem to be thought of the most highly by her fans.) Lackey also has prolific-author syndrome, unfortunately, and the Storm books are one of the few later Lackey trilogies that I re-read. The plots still suffer from author-induced stupidity (if you’re going to explore someplace completely unknown, on a really important mission, and you have people around who are telekinetic, don’t you think it would be a good idea to bring one of them in case you find something unexpected, or even something on a really high shelf?), some glaring continuity errors, and a fair lack of subtlety, but I happen to particularly like the characters in this trilogy and find their company soothing. Karal is a young priest of a land that’s been at war with Valdemar for generations, trying to make sense of a world where suddenly it was his religious hierarchy that was evil in the past, not Valdemar—while on a diplomatic mission to Valdemar itself. If that weren’t unsettling enough, then weird things start happening—magical storms, as the titles imply. The other major new character is Tremane, head of an Imperial Army that invaded the next country over from Valdemar, with some buried shreds of decency and conscience in a culture that rewards only expediency. Anyway, lots of stuff happens, Karal and Tremane plug along doing what has to be done, the World Is Saved, and more subway rides have passed harmoniously. (Though stickily. It’s pretty miserable in New York City right now, and though the subway cars are air conditioned, none of my stations are.) Hooray.

No Comments

Posted on

Kagan, Janet: Mirabile

A great book I read recently, though before I started this log, is Mirabile by Janet Kagan. It was mentioned prominently in a thread on rec.arts.sf.written about “Cheerful SF,” and so when I spotted it on the shelf at the library, I grabbed it.

It certainly lives up to its billing. Mirabile is about a planet colonized by people from Earth, whose plant and animal gene banks have some unusual twists—literally, as the geneticists on Earth had a fetish for redundancy and encoded secondary and tertiary DNA helices in everything. Thus, when the conditions are just right, a few of your petunias might seed ladybugs—or poisonous ants. And your kangaroos might give birth to carnivorous kangaroo rexes, which might be an intermediate step on the way to something useful (or at least Earth-authentic), or might just be Dragon’s Teeth, mutations that affect the backup helices to produce very strange things indeed.

It’s a full-time job keeping these stable, and Mirabile is told by one of these geneticists, called “jasons” after the premier first-generation geneticist. Annie Jason Masmajean has a dry and thoroughly enjoyable way of telling a story, and the types of problems she faces lend themselves well to stand-alone chapters, perfect for the subway or just before bed. Mirabile‘s got humor, a bit of suspense, a bit of romance, lovely characters (and creatures; Mabob is strangely charming, even if he’d be deafening in person), and even a thoughtfully science-fictional approach to the problem of Dragon’s Teeth (I can’t vouch for the plausibility of encoding secondary helixes in DNA, though). It’s a great read, but out of print, so if you spot a copy, grab it.

3 Comments

Posted on

Krentz, Jayne Ann: Lost and Found

There’s a certain class of book I get out of the library when I’m using mass transit to commute to work. For one thing, when I’m commuting via New York City’s subway system, paperbacks are a definite plus, as holding a hardback in one (not very large) hand, in a crowd of people, while hanging for dear life onto a pole with the other hand, is, well, not optimal. But in addition, at the end of a sweaty trip on the subway, after a long day at work, sometimes I just feel like something not terribly challenging over dinner, to rest before working out, reading that law journal piece I’m supposed to be editing, writing that law school paper I’m supposed to be writing . . .

The most recent three books I’ve been reading were checked out of the library with this in mind. Only one of them is new to me, Jayne Ann Krentz’s Lost and Found; though currently in hardcover, it otherwise fits the mold well, though a little more brainlessly than most.

I suppose I should back up a little. In my adolescence, I read genre romance novels indiscriminately—in much the same way I read everything else then, really. There are a few authors that I still get out of the library, as part of my “guilty pleasure” stack: Nora Roberts, Jayne Ann Krentz, and Linda Howard are the major ones. Unfortunately, it seems that when romance novelists make the move into mainstream hardcover fiction, they feel obliged to throw in murders and paranormal stuff and goodness knows what-all else to justify the removal of that killer word “Romance” from the spines of their books. I’ve never quite understood this, but it seems rather a pity, particularly in Jayne Ann Krentz’s books, which I read for the characters and family dynamics.

Lost and Found is set in the decorative arts and antiques world; Cady Briggs is an expert on authenticating pieces, Mack Easton runs a company that traces and retrieves lost and missing pieces, and they end up working together to investigate a death in Cady’s family. The book follows the general pattern of a Krentz novel: Her protagonists are generally business men and women, stubborn, loyal, a bit wary after being burned in the past, with a tangle of demanding, complicated, and, dare I say it, quirky, familial relationships and friendships. They meet, sparks fly, they fall into bed (for really rather brief bouts of sex; I’d quote, but I don’t know who might come across this. All I can say is I had no idea there were so many people satisfied by wham-bams, such that they keep showing up in these books.), they have spats, they fall into bed some more (for even briefer bouts), they figure out whatever external problem brought them together, they smooth out the longstanding tensions in their familial relationships with the aid of the other’s insight, and then they live happily ever after.

This sounds cynical, but they’re soothing and fairly entertaining reads. Krentz does have a sense of humor, and the emphasis on family is a good touch; many of the romance novels I devoured in my misspent youth (TM) seemed to imagine that the protagonists existed in vacuums, with other characters appearing solely as plot devices or convenient receptacles for exposition. Unfortunately, as with many prolific authors, the energy level and freshness of recent books has declined. If the general pattern described above sounds appealing, I recommend reading one of Krentz’s early books, like The Golden Chance. Lost and Found certainly served the purpose of occupying my mind during a Sunday morning when I was feeling slightly ill, though, so I don’t regret carting it home from the library. (I regret having to go back to the library because I’d left my wallet there, but that’s another story.)

No Comments